Staring at Himself in the Cracked Mirror
by Rosawyn
Summary: When Steve is looking for work, someone makes him an offer Bucky can't let him accept.


**Staring at Himself in the Cracked Mirror**

"Hey, Buck." Steve closed the door behind him, hung up his jacket, and bent to pull off his shoes.

Bucky looked up from the pot of beans he was heating on the stove and smiled at his friend. "Hey, Stevie. Dinner's almost ready."

Steve gave him a halfhearted smile in return and walked over to the cupboard to pull out two plates and set them on the table.

"No luck today, hey?" Bucky asked. Steve had been trying to find a job for a while, but it hadn't been going so well.

Steve shook his head, setting the forks down next to the plates. "Well, not exactly." He paused, looking down at the surface of the table. "No one wants to hire me for anything I asked about." That wasn't a surprise, really. There were lots of guys looking for work, so most people took one look at how small Steve was and decided he wasn't fit. It was stupid, but it was the way things were. "Some guy approached me on the street when I was on my way back here—just some guy I'd never seen before. He...offered me money if I'd suck his cock."

Bucky froze, cold dread twisting in his gut. "Stevie." He set the spoon down and turned to face his friend. "Are you...are you okay? He didn't try to hurt you or nothin'?" Steve was real tough for his size, but he was always picking fights with guys who were way bigger than him...or more than one guy at a time.

Steve glanced up at him. "I'm fine, Buck." He huffed out a breath, shaking his head. "I just sorta stood there and gaped at him like an idiot, and I guess he took that as a 'no' and walked off."

Bucky let out a breath. Good, that was good.

"Them beans about ready?" Steve asked, pointing to the pot on the stove behind Bucky.

"Uh, yeah." Bucky turned to grab the pot and served the food up onto the two plates then grabbed the toast from the oven. "Might as well eat before it gets cold." He sat down.

Steve took his seat across the table and picked up his spoon then paused, frowning in thought. "Wouldn't be so bad, though, would it? I mean, it's not as bad as stealing, and if a person really needed the money..."

Bucky stared at him. "What? You mean doing _that_ for money?"

Steve nodded, not quite meeting Bucky's eyes. "Plenty of girls do it—we've both seen them around—and I ain't never judged them for it. I always figured they had their reasons." He shrugged his thin shoulders slightly. "I don't expect anyone just gets into that because they figure it'd be fun."

Bucky let out a breath between his teeth and looked around at the dingy walls of the small kitchen. "I don't expect anyone does," he conceded. "And you're right; it's not something we should be lookin' down on, when a person's pushed to that point. But, Steve..." He shifted forward in his chair, looking intently at his friend. "You ain't never gonna need money that bad."

Steve glanced up at him, eyes sullen as he stirred his spoon through his plate of beans. "'Cause I just take all your money for doin' nothin' at all."

Bucky resisted rolling his eyes and slumped back in his chair, staring down at his own plate. "We take care of each other, Stevie. It's always been that way."

"I know that's what you always say," Steve said, taking a bite of his toast and chewing it slowly. "But we both know I don't do nearly as much as you." He gestured toward Bucky with his spoon. "You work hard all day and then I eat half your food. It's not exactly fair."

Bucky narrowed his eyes at him, resting his forearms on the table and leaning over his plate again. "When you get a job, then you'll buy food and I'll eat half of it."

Steve shook his head. "When am I gonna get a job, then? No one wants to hire me. No one but some random guy on the street who—"

"_Steve_." Bucky's tone was harder than he'd intended, but he really needed Steve to shut up. This wasn't something that was ever going to be okay. Not for Steve. "I need you to promise me, really promise, that you'll never do that."

Steve met his gaze, eyes flashing like he was about to start some back-alley brawl with some guy three times his size. "Why the hell, not? If we really needed the money, it'd be better than stealin' it."

"It would never be worth it, not for you." Bucky's brain was racing, trying to find an argument more convincing than, 'It's just _wrong_, dammit.'

"What's so special about me, specifically?" Steve was glaring at Bucky like he knew his friend didn't have a good answer to that.

"Your health!" Bucky finally blurted. "There's...Steve, there's diseases, like syphilis and...others. You can catch them from doing things like that. When a person is already sick a lot like you, he's more likely to catch them." Bucky wasn't sure, but it must be true. Why else did Steve catch pneumonia every winter, and Bucky didn't even though he was right there with Steve and could probably catch it _from_ Steve? "You know I don't want you go get sick, and it's not like we can afford doctors as it is." Oh, _that_ was a good argument.

Steve dropped his gaze to his plate and nodded, and Bucky knew he'd won. "All right, Buck." Steve sighed. "You're probably right about that." After a short pause Steve added. "So I do promise; I won't do that, no matter how much we might need money."

Bucky tried not to show just how relieved he was. It really wouldn't help to gloat, not about this.

o0o

"Do you ever worry about your health then, Bucky?" Steve was washing the dishes while Bucky dried.

"Hmm?" Bucky stacked the clean plate back in the cupboard where it belonged.

"Well, like you said there's diseases...from that sort of thing." Steve pulled the plug to drain the sink. "Seems to me you can catch them from girls as well as guys."

"Well, yeah, but..." Bucky leaned his hip against the counter and tilted his head back to look down at Steve under lazy eyelids. "You tryin' to call me 'easy,' Rogers?"

"No." Steve shook his head, smiling awkwardly before shrugging as he grabbed the dishtowel to dry his hands. "I'm just tryin' to figure out how your brand of stupid works is all."

Bucky chuckled, then wandered over and flopped down on the couch. "I guess it seems like it's more worth it when the sex is for fun than when it's for money." He shrugged. "I dunno if that makes any sense to a logical, sensible, _moral_ person such as yourself." He grinned at Steve as the smaller man joined him on the couch, flopping down on the opposite end—even if he sprawled as much as Bucky, which he didn't, he'd still never have a hope of taking up as much space. "But it just feels worth it."

"Yeah, well." The corner of Steve's mouth turned up ruefully. "I wouldn't exactly know about that, now would I?"

"Hey." Bucky nudged Steve's ankle with his foot. "You'll meet the right girl one day. Some real classy dame." Bucky grinned. "That's the problem with the ones I keep tryin' to fix you up with—I don't know any real classy dames."

Steve shrugged. "There ain't nothing wrong with any of those girls, Buck."

Bucky shook his head. "You mean other than them bein' blind as well as stupid?"

Steve shook his head, rolling his eyes a little. "Just 'cause they don't want me don't mean there's somethin' wrong with them. Everybody's got different tastes. And I wouldn't want someone who just felt sorry for me, anyway."

Well, _fine_. "But there are other girls out there, Steve. _Different_ girls." Part of the problem was that Steve himself was just too picky, but Bucky didn't want to get into _that_ argument again. Somehow that always did end up with Steve calling Bucky easy, though never in so many words. "One of these days you're gonna wind up married to one of 'em with a whole bunch of kids." That would be nice; Steve would make a great dad.

o0o

A month and a half later, Bucky got laid off from his job. Steve still hadn't found anything, though not for lack of trying, so then they were both out each day looking.

But then Steve got sick, no doubt from all the walking he'd done in the cold and rain that past week—Bucky had thought about telling him to stay home, but with no money and no income, he knew Steve would never listen. One of them _really_ needed a job, and fast. They barely had any food left and no way to pay rent, and now they needed a doctor and medicine, and it sure wasn't going to help Steve any when the heat got cut off.

Bucky stood in their tiny bathroom staring at himself in the cracked mirror by the light of the single bare bulb. He'd just finished shaving and styling his hair and he figured he looked pretty good. Sick worry had been building cold and poisonous and relentless in his gut for days, but he had a plan now. It wasn't a good plan, but it was better than any of the alternatives at this point.

He hadn't told Steve anything, and wouldn't ever if he could get away with it. Upsetting him would no doubt just lead to another asthma attack, anyway. Poor kid was sleeping now, propped up on both of their pillows and half of their clothes as well so he could actually breathe. Bucky hated to leave him—he might wake up at any point and need help, but the help he needed most was the help Bucky was going to get him: a doctor and medicine.

And it's not like Steve would have any call to argue with Bucky's plan, but it'd upset him nonetheless. The thing was, though, if Steve himself could consider it, Bucky better damn well consider it as well. And he had. Bucky would probably be okay, too, since he was almost always healthy. Things like syphilis were pretty rare anyway, and it's not like he was planning to make a career out of it—this was just for until he got another job.

And they needed money and this was a way to get it. For whatever reason, some guys felt it was worth it to pay someone to suck their cocks, when it really couldn't be _that_ hard to find someone willing to do it for free. Bucky hadn't ever had any trouble, really. But maybe it was different when you wanted a guy to do it, because there'd be fewer and they'd be harder to find. Though plenty of guys apparently paid girls to do it too.

Bucky shrugged, turning off the bathroom light and walking quietly across the apartment to the door, where he pulled on his jacket. Who was he to question it when someone was going to give him money? He never bothered questioning what was in the crates he'd moved at the docks or where they were going either, just did as he was told. And this was no different: just do the job and get the money. From what he understood, it even paid pretty darn well for the actual time spent.

He didn't put his shoes on until he was out in the hallway after having silently closed the door.

Steve might ask where he got the money, but by that point Steve would be healthy again, so it really wouldn't matter.

o0o

Several decades later when Bucky was struggling to recover the things Hydra had taken from him, he asked Steve about this particular memory, because Bucky was never sure what memories were real. Steve's look for utter horror—shock and _guilt_ in his clear blue eyes—made two things just as clear: it had happened, and Steve hadn't known. It had happened, clearly, because enough of the surrounding details lined up with Steve's own memories. The shock—unfeigned, because Steve was terrible at feigning anything—clarified the rest.

But the idea that it could some how _matter_, that a choice he'd made to let some guys pay him for sex could possibly be important after everything Hydra had done to his body and his mind, after everything they'd _made him do_, all the people they'd made him _kill_, was painfully hilarious. Bucky laughed until his face, until his sides hurt.

And Steve just watched, his own hurt still visible in those eyes, in the set of that grossly perfect jaw. "Of course it still matters, Bucky," he said.

o0o

**A/N: If you'd like to read a far _nicer_ story with a similar premise (pre-war Steve and Bucky struggling to get by), check out my other oneshot, "Loaves and Fishes."**


End file.
